The purpose of this web site is to help students like yourself who are or would like to
study Business Information Systems. Using this website, you will be able to find out exactly what a Information System is and to answer any questions which you may have about the subject.
What is an information system?
There are many ways which you could define an information system. The most simplest and easiest definition of an information system technically would be:"A set of interrelated components that work together to collect, process, store, and distribute information, to support decision making, coordination, and control in an organisation."Information systems may help managers and workers in a business to analyse problems, visualize complex subjects, and create new products. Information systems have become so vital to the management, organisation, operation, and products of large organizations that they are too important to be left only to technicians, as they were before.
To stay competitive many organisations actually need to be redesigned. They will need to use information technology to simplify communication and coordination, eliminate unnecessary work, and eliminate the inefficiencies of outmoded organisational structures.
Why is Information systems so important today?
There is a much greater need to plan for the overall information architecture of the organisation. The kind of systems built today are more important for the overall performance of the organisation, especially in todays highly globalized and information based economy. Technologies have become more powerful and more difficult to implement; and new applications require intense interaction betweeen professional technical experts and general management therefore information systems allow these processes to occur.
What is Information, Data, Input, Processing and output?
By the term Information one would associate data which has been processed into a form which is both meaningful and useful to human beings. Data in contrast is a string of raw facts or numbers which have no real meaning, as the data needs to be organized and arranged into a form that people could not only understand but also use in an organisation.
An information system contains information about an organisation and its surrounding environment. There are three basic activities in an information system that produce the information which an organisation needs for making decisions these are, input, processing and output. Input captures or collects the relevant information, either from within the organisation or from its external environment. Processing converts raw data into a more meaningful form. Ouput transfers the processed information to the people or activities where it will be used.
Books which could be useful to you!
Elliot G. & S.Starkings (1998) "Business Information Technology", Longman
Gordon S.R. & J.R. Gordon (1996) "Information Systems: A management Approach", Dryden
Gupta, U. (1996) "Management Information Systems", West
Laudon & Loudon (1998) " Management Information Systems", 5th, Prentice Hall